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Collaborations around the ALADIN project
The ALADIN Project within the European collaborations in Numerical Forecast
ALADIN is a consortium of the European SRNWP Network (
map of the SRNWP consortia in Europe);
ALADIN is linked to ECMWF through the software protection agreement between ECMWF and Meteo-France signed on 19/02/1999;
ALADIN had a research cooperation with HIRLAM for years; an enhanced cooperation started in 2004 and a Cooperation Agreement between the ALADIN consortium and the HIRLAM consortium was signed on December 6, 2005.
Genesis of the HIRLAM-ALADIN partnership in mesoscale modelling
After the first contact of the Hirlam Management Group in autumn 2003, many ALADIN-HIRLAM mesoscale collaboration events took place in 2004 : training course, granted licence for research, full code cooperation ...
During the 9th Assembly of ALADIN Partners (Split, 29-30 0ctober 2004), an history of the collaboration events and a roadmap and a time-schedule for the cooperation were proposed (see Andras Horanyi and Per Unden presentations at this Assembly). Then, a resolution on ALADIN-HIRLAM cooperation was unanimously adopted.
The HIRLAM Council (Reading, 15 December 2004) gave a very positive answer to this resolution that was presented by Dr. Ivan Cacic.
On December 5, 2005, during the HIRLAM Council, a Cooperation Agreement between the ALADIN consortium and the HIRLAM consortium was signed with prime objective "to provide the ALADIN and the HIRLAM Members with a state-of-the-art NWP-model for Short and Very Short Range Forecasting including Nowcasting, for both Research and Development activities and Operational usage". This Agreement specifies the conditions for the collaboration between the ALADIN consortium and the HIRLAM consortium as mentioned in their Memorandums of Understanding. A shared ALADIN-HIRLAM System is developed to facilitate the transition to a fully common ALADIN-HIRLAM code.ALADIN and AROME
from ALADIN (Aire Limitée Adaptation dynamique Développment INternational)
to ALADIN-2 (AROME Limited Area Decentralized International Network
via ALARO (transition step between ALADIN and AROME)
to ALADIN-2 (AROME Limited Area Decentralized International Network
via ALARO (transition step between ALADIN and AROME)
AROME is a Météo-France project aiming to design a NWP LAM of very high resolution (2-3 km) within 2010, "as far as possible in cooperation with ALADIN partners". The ALADIN non-hydrostatic dynamics (and the ALADIN source code) was chosen as the starting point for AROME. A report, issued from CSSI discussions, was sent to Directors and a dedicated scientific+political workshop has been organized in Prague (11-12 April).
On LACE proposal, a so-called AAA (AROME-ALARO-ALADIN) meeting was organised in Prague on February 13, 2004, with the aim to clarify the views of the concerned bodies and to get some guidelines how to start real work on ALADIN-2.The status at the end of 2005 as presented during the 10th Assembly : Towards AROME: status and plans of the ALADIN-2 projects (ALARO, AROME, INTERFACES).
ALADIN and new-LACE organisation
The organization of the LACE group (including Austria, Czech Republic, Croatia, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia) has been modified. From the beginning of 2003, the common operational LACE suite stops. Each partner is responsible for its own operational applications, only the coupling files computed from ARPEGE are the same for all domains. Hence several teams were very busy with the design of new operational domains along the last months. Cooperation remains in research (3 working groups), training (next topic : ODB) and maintenance actions.
The new team of coordinators is the following : project leader (Dijana Klaric), dynamics and coupling (Petra Smolikova), data assimilation (Gergö Bölöni), physics (Thomas Haiden), maintenance (Oldrich Spaniel), data management (Stjepan Ivatek-Sahdan).
The cooperation with African countries
Following the conclusions of the working group's meeting in Ston-Dubrovnik (Croatia - 04.2002) and of the WMO meeting in Pretoria (RSA - 10.2002), and within the cooperation between ACMAD and Météo-France on one hand and between ACMAD and DMN Morocco on the second hand, to develop NWP in Africa, a new configuration of ALADIN, called ALADIN-NORAF, is running operationally in Casablanca since the 24th of February. The NWP products issued from this new model should be sent to the covered NMSs via RETIM 2000 or Internet. The final agreement is for the following list of African countries : Algeria, Benin, Burkina-Faso, Chad, Egypt, Eritrea, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra-Leone, Sudan, Togo (Morocco and Tunisia being full ALADIN members).
The ALADIN-NORAF domain covers nearly all the African countries to the north of the equator (from 43.86°N to 0.70°S and from 36.20°W to 56.48°E). This model is run twice a day, at 00 and 12 h UTC, with respectively 72h and 60h forecasts. Data assimilation is realized every 6 hours, using optimal interpolation in a first step. By the end of this year Morocco plans to use raw radiances from TOVS AMSU-A with a 3d-var implementation. The coupling files are provided by Météo-France from the ARPEGE stretched global model. In parallel a local model ALADIN-ALBACHIR, covering Morocco, is run without data assimilation and coupled with the regional model ALADIN-NORAF.
A new users' group, the Committee of Users of the Model ALADIN-NORAF (CUMAN), has been created by ACMAD to define the best products which should be produced and distributed to the NMSs, and to discuss on the different topics linked to the exploitation of this new model. The first meeting of the CUMAN will be held in Casablanca by the end of April.